In a strategic move to spotlight the diverse landscape of American venture capital, the NVCA’s "Meet a VC" series recently featured Mike Moradi, co-founder and general partner of Cortado Ventures. Based in Oklahoma City, Cortado Ventures has rapidly distinguished itself as a pivotal player, channeling investment into seed-stage frontier technology companies primarily within the U.S. Midcontinent. The firm’s distinctive investment thesis is predicated on a profound belief: the most impactful founders, those poised to revolutionize critical industries, are often individuals who have dedicated years to working within those very sectors. By strategically bridging their invaluable domain expertise with essential capital, customer access, and an expansive network of support, Cortado Ventures is actively fostering an environment where American innovation can flourish beyond traditional coastal hubs.
A Founder’s Journey Shapes Investment Philosophy
Mike Moradi’s path to venture capital is deeply rooted in his firsthand experiences navigating the tumultuous landscape of company building. A serial entrepreneur, Moradi has founded and led six companies spanning technically complex industries such as biopharmaceuticals and nanotechnology. His entrepreneurial odyssey commenced with a bold decision to depart dental school, a choice that led to his first startup endeavor – a venture that ultimately failed. Far from deterring him, this initial setback proved to be a crucible, forging an unwavering resolve to persevere through obstacles and maintain commitment even when faced with widespread skepticism. Moradi succinctly captures this formative lesson: "The lesson was to keep pushing past every obstacle, to not be discouraged by hearing the word ‘no,’ and to stay the course."
This early experience was swiftly followed by significant successes. His subsequent company experienced rapid growth, culminating in its acquisition by a Fortune 100 enterprise. A later venture in the highly competitive San Francisco Bay Area also achieved an acquisition, but only after teetering on the brink of collapse following an $18 million Series B financing round. This near-failure imparted another critical lesson: while capital can indeed accelerate a company’s trajectory, such speed is only advantageous when the business is progressing in the correct direction and possesses genuine readiness for scaling. Moradi cautions against the perils of misdirected growth, observing, "A high valuation and a full bank account will happily let you scale the wrong thing."
These indelible experiences have profoundly shaped Moradi’s current mission: to infuse the entrepreneurial dynamism often associated with Silicon Valley into the burgeoning Midcontinent innovation ecosystem. He meticulously considers the sequencing and timing of capital deployment with as much rigor as he evaluates a company’s core technology. For Moradi, financing should primarily serve to facilitate the testing of assumptions, mitigate inherent risks, and enable the achievement of concrete, meaningful milestones. Crucially, it should not permit a business to expand prematurely, outpacing its proven capabilities and market validation. This philosophy underscores the necessity of pairing entrepreneurial optimism with empirical evidence, disciplined execution, and a crystal-clear understanding of the company’s immediate, demonstrable objectives.
In 2020, Moradi, alongside a cadre of seasoned founders, CEOs, and operators, co-launched Cortado Ventures. Their collective ambition was to construct the very kind of firm they wished had existed during their own entrepreneurial journeys: one deeply empathetic to the multifaceted decisions founders confront and capable of contributing value far beyond the initial capital injection.
The Midcontinent: A Strategic Nexus for Innovation
Cortado Ventures’ geographic focus on the U.S. Midcontinent is not merely coincidental; it is a strategic advantage. This region serves as home to numerous foundational American industries currently facing immense pressure to evolve and innovate. Sectors such as energy, aerospace and defense, healthcare, manufacturing, mobility, and logistics are characterized by complex physical infrastructures, deeply entrenched supply chains, and demanding customer relationships. Effecting transformative change within these industries requires more than just a compelling software application; it necessitates an intimate, granular understanding of their operational intricacies.
Cortado actively seeks out experienced technical founders who possess this invaluable intrinsic knowledge. These individuals may have spent years immersed within a hospital, factory, laboratory, energy corporation, aerospace program, or logistics network before identifying a critical, persistent problem and conceiving a novel solution. Their deep-seated industry experience provides unparalleled credibility with customers, crucial insight into potential implementation challenges, and a knowledge base that would be exceedingly difficult to cultivate from an external perspective.
The Midcontinent’s geography itself contributes significantly to the investment advantage. The region offers close proximity to these critical industries and a vast pool of potential customers. It boasts a technically skilled workforce, robust research institutions, access to complementary public funding initiatives, and significantly lower company-building costs compared to coastal tech hubs. This confluence of factors creates a fertile ground for developing and scaling innovative solutions.
Cortado’s diverse portfolio stands as a testament to the breadth of innovation emerging from this environment. Their investee companies are leveraging cutting-edge technologies across a spectrum of applications, including space communications, industrial safety, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing processes, healthcare delivery, energy solutions, and mobility advancements. The firm’s strategy is not rooted in the notion that Midcontinent founders should receive investment solely due to historical undercapitalization. Instead, it is built upon the firm conviction that direct proximity to complex, hard problems inherently fosters the creation of differentiated companies and generates robust financial returns. Moradi articulates this vision powerfully: "Talent is not concentrated anywhere in particular. Capital and networks have just been slower to distribute than talent has." For Moradi, expanding the geographic footprint of venture capital is not simply about identifying more founders; it is fundamentally about uncovering previously overlooked sources of profound insight and groundbreaking innovation that traditional networks have historically bypassed.
Beyond Capital: The Imperative of Ecosystem Building
When Cortado Ventures initially launched, Moradi operated under the assumption that the primary constraint impeding a nascent venture ecosystem was a sheer shortage of capital. The firm successfully demonstrated that promising companies could indeed be identified and funded within the region. However, as Cortado expanded and matured, Moradi’s understanding of what founders truly required evolved dramatically, becoming far more expansive. He reflects on this evolution: "Five years ago, I would have said the limiting reagent in a young ecosystem was capital. Capital turned out to be necessary, and also nowhere close to sufficient."
Founders, he realized, need a multifaceted support system. This includes experienced operators who can guide them in circumventing preventable errors, early-adopter customers willing to pilot unproven technologies, patient investors prepared to sustain a company between significant milestones, and a vibrant community where vital relationships can naturally coalesce. Moradi emphasizes the qualitative difference: "Money can accelerate a company. It cannot stand in for experience."
This profound realization has intrinsically shaped Cortado’s expansive role within the broader Midcontinent ecosystem. The firm actively works to forge connections among founders, funders, academic institutions, corporations, policymakers, and technical experts, rather than exclusively reserving these valuable relationships for its own portfolio companies. Cortado’s annual Midcontinent Venture Capital Summit serves as a critical convener, bringing together investors, limited partners, founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the nation. Furthermore, Cortado collaborates extensively with regional entrepreneurship organizations and The Verge, an Oklahoma City-based incubator and accelerator that provides comprehensive company-building resources, targeted programming, and crucial capital connections. Each of these interactions represents a potential catalyst, helping a founder discover a customer, an invaluable adviser, a key employee, a strategic collaborator, or a future investor. Collectively, these relationships meticulously construct the underlying infrastructure that enables a greater number of companies to both launch and scale successfully. For Moradi, this is precisely where venture capital’s impact transcends a singular investment, contributing to a stronger ecosystem that offers more entrepreneurs a viable pathway to company formation, simultaneously creating more opportunities for capital, talent, and innovation to converge.
Conviction Without False Certainty: A Disciplined Investment Approach
Investing at the early stage inherently involves operating with imperfect information. Moradi candidly acknowledges this reality: "Incomplete data is my job description." Rather than attempting the impossible task of eliminating uncertainty, he employs a disciplined approach, meticulously separating assumptions that can be immediately tested from those that will only resolve over a longer timeframe. He rigorously identifies the critical conditions that must hold true, thoughtfully considers how these conditions could be disproven, and meticulously evaluates the cost associated with achieving the next meaningful milestone.
Moradi’s strongest convictions typically center on the founding team’s capabilities, the precise customer problem being addressed, and the company’s demonstrable rate of progress. Conversely, he exercises greater caution when attempting to predict the exact timing of an emerging market or the specific pathway a company might eventually take to an exit event. This disciplined approach becomes particularly vital when a financing round progresses with undue haste. A charismatic founder and a highly competitive process can generate intense pressure to finalize a decision before the central investment assumptions have been thoroughly vetted. Moradi keenly observes a dangerous dynamic: "A hard deadline is exactly when people stop asking uncomfortable questions."
When circumstances necessitate, Cortado will deliberately slow down the investment process, bringing in independent scientific or technical experts for a deeper evaluation. This additional diligence may either unequivocally strengthen the firm’s conviction or, conversely, reveal a compelling reason to step away from the opportunity. Many of Cortado’s most robust founder relationships have actually commenced with this very scrutiny, as it serves to sharpen strategic thinking and identify latent risks while there remains ample time to address them proactively. However, slowing down the decision-making process does not equate to a sluggish response; rather, it ensures a well-informed, strategic commitment.
Moradi applies the same rigorous discipline to valuation. He champions the concept that "A sensible entry price is a form of protection for the founder, employees, and investors alike." While an aggressively high valuation might initially feel like a triumphant victory, if the company’s subsequent progress fails to meet the elevated expectations embedded in that number, the consequences can be far-reaching. Such discrepancies can negatively impact founder ownership, dilute employee equity, constrain future fundraising options, and severely impede the company’s agility and ability to adapt. This dynamic is a double-edged sword, as venture capitalists can also inadvertently stifle a company’s potential through overly harsh terms; striking a judicious balance is paramount. Moradi sagely reminds, "The right number buys you options for years. In boom times, people forget that financial crises happen." For Cortado, this discipline is not indicative of a lack of belief in a founder’s ambition; it is, in fact, a deliberate strategy to provide an ambitious company with the crucial flexibility and essential time it needs to achieve enduring success.
Meaningful Support: Speed, Specificity, and Empathy
The Cortado team’s collective experience, having built, scaled, and successfully exited companies across many of the industries in which the firm now invests, profoundly shapes its approach to supporting founders. This operating expertise is particularly critical when original plans inevitably shift or difficult decisions emerge. Moradi distills meaningful support into two potent words: "Speed and specificity." He elaborates on this ethos: "Answer in hours rather than days and show up with work already done instead of advice. Better yet, pick up the phone."
This hands-on approach can manifest in diverse ways: meticulously rebuilding a complex financial model, facilitating a crucial customer introduction, actively recruiting a senior executive, or taking direct responsibility for navigating a challenging aspect of a board conversation. It also encompasses the difficult, yet essential, task of articulating truths that others might be reluctant to voice, especially when a company’s financial runway is dwindling or its strategic direction urgently requires recalibration. Moradi vividly recalls being the founder in such high-stakes meetings: "What helped was someone who lowered the temperature, told the truth to me and the board, and followed up after the meeting."
Cortado’s founder support mechanisms have become increasingly sophisticated as both the firm and the surrounding Midcontinent ecosystem have matured. Portfolio companies now benefit from access to a deep network comprising operating executives, industry specialists, expert advisers, prospective customers, experienced coaches, follow-on investors, and a supportive community of fellow founders within the firm’s expansive network. Concurrently, the needs of founders have also evolved. In earlier stages when capital was scarce in the region, Cortado’s investment and its ability to attract additional investors into a round were particularly valuable. Today, founders increasingly require customer access, top-tier senior talent, specialized technical expertise, and individuals willing to offer candid, honest guidance. Crucially, the firm’s role is not to usurp control from the entrepreneur. Sometimes, the most valuable contribution an investor can make is precisely knowing when not to intervene. Moradi acknowledges this nuanced balance: "Other times, being helpful means staying out of the way."
Building What Outlasts a Fund: A Legacy of Ecosystem Development
Moradi holds a strong conviction that a venture firm’s responsibility extends far beyond the confines of its own portfolio companies. "We must build things that outlast a single fund," he asserts. For Cortado, this translates into a proactive commitment to strengthening the connective tissue among founders, funders, universities, corporations, and policymakers. It also means actively fostering the formation and growth of more investment firms within the region. Moradi champions a collaborative spirit: "This is not a zero-sum game. We want to enable a dozen other firms in our geography, and bring in outside funds for later rounds. We need to create scalable structures where everyone can win."
A larger, more interconnected investment community inherently provides founders with a broader array of potential capital sources and expertise. It simultaneously creates more opportunities for investors to collaborate and participate in promising companies. Over time, this collective effort can establish a more durable and efficient pathway between regional innovation and the broader national capital markets. This expansive vision of ecosystem building, however, does not supersede a firm’s fundamental fiduciary responsibility to its limited partners. Moradi’s prior experience as a trustee and audit committee member for a state retirement system underscored the paramount importance of being direct and transparent about investment risk, duration, and potential losses. He emphasizes, "Ecosystem building matters, and it does not excuse any of us from being disciplined fiduciaries first."
Moradi also recognizes the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) as an indispensable component of the connective infrastructure that supports firms and founders across the United States. Policy areas such as capital formation, research commercialization, immigration reform, government procurement, equitable tax treatment, and robust securities regulations are not abstract political debates. They directly influence the ability of an emerging manager to raise a fund, a startup to attract critical talent, and a new technology to reach the customers and institutions that desperately need it. "NVCA helps each of us make policy concrete and stay on top of the issues that matter in D.C. and beyond," Moradi states. Participation in the NVCA also affords Cortado a crucial platform to introduce a distinct Midcontinent perspective into national dialogues concerning innovation, capital formation, and the future trajectory of the venture industry.
Expanding the Map of American Innovation
Moradi hopes that Cortado’s compelling narrative can help illuminate the true breadth and diversity of American venture capital. While the industry’s largest, most prominent firms often garner the lion’s share of attention, the vast majority of venture activity comprises smaller, specialized investors writing early-stage checks into niche industries, specific technologies, underserved communities, and emerging regions. "Most of VC looks nothing like the caricature. The bulk of the industry is small firms writing early checks into some niche, be it industrial, geographic, demographic, or otherwise. And a VC firm is also a startup until fund 3 or 4," Moradi explains.
These specialized firms play an absolutely essential role: identifying promising founders before their markets become obvious, skillfully connecting specialized knowledge with patient capital, and diligently helping companies navigate the notoriously difficult period between a promising initial idea and the establishment of a sustainable, scalable business. "The hardest work happens after the money moves," Moradi observes.
The advent of new technologies is rendering this work even more consequential. Advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, sophisticated manufacturing techniques, energy innovation, biological sciences, and space technology are dramatically reducing the cost barriers associated with attempting ambitious, transformative ideas. Consequently, small, agile teams can now realistically pursue opportunities that once demanded the colossal resources of a large corporation or a national program. Many of these pioneering teams, Moradi posits, will naturally emerge in geographic locations intimately connected to the complex problems they are striving to solve.
This is the broader, profound impact of strategically expanding venture capital across America. When investors consciously look beyond familiar networks and actively engage with founders in regions where critical industries operate, they facilitate a powerful virtuous cycle: more innovative ideas evolve into viable companies, more groundbreaking technologies successfully reach the market, and a greater number of communities actively participate in, and benefit from, the nation’s dynamic innovation economy. For Mike Moradi, the audacious founders who dare to attempt what others deem impossible remain the single greatest reason for enduring optimism. "Never forget that we’re here for them. When we do this right, everyone, including humanity, wins."
The NVCA proudly recognizes Cortado Ventures as a valued member, a firm that embodies the spirit of innovation and regional economic development. To learn more about their impactful work, visit cortado.ventures.
